


When Nobody Else is Home

by haraya



Series: Just a Moment in the Light [4]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-21 23:04:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9570782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haraya/pseuds/haraya
Summary: In which Garrus realizes how far friendship can take you—even through betrayal, heartbreak, hopeful crushes, a suicide mission, and the imminent harvesting of all organic life.Being the Vakarian to a Shepard is a full-time commitment.





	1. From Death, Deliverance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read the tags, because idk how much more I can emphasize that this is gonna be platonic Shep & Garrus friendship all the way, so don't get your hopes up.
> 
> Friendship is important too, you know!

He doesn’t start thinking of Shepard as his friend until she pulls through for him the way only a real friend would: she saves his life.

She even comes back from the dead to do it.

If that isn’t friendship, he doesn’t know what is.

“I thought you were dead,” he tells her. He’s still half-certain this is some near-death hallucination.

“I got better,” she says.

He looks at her. She seems . . . very _odd,_ for a hallucination. She moves stiffly, like she’s still getting used to living in her skin; there are lines on her face aside from her strange new scars that just make her look . . . tired. _Vulnerable._ She’s a far cry from the Commander who danced on the battlefield – though not on an actual dance floor, certainly – the stalwart leader, the invincible Spectre.

She just looks . . . _human,_ for lack of a better word.

He thinks, later, that that’s how he recognizes her – this half-cybernetic Shepard that Cerberus pulled back from the claws of death itself. The Shepard he’d known would never have come through that unscathed, would never have worked with people in the stark black-and-yellow of Cerberus without the crushing guilt evidently weighing on her shoulders.

When she snipes a Loki mech across the bridge, the ghost of a familiar challenging grin on her mouth, Garrus decides: _he’ll pull through for her._ He won’t leave her in the clutches of a shady terrorist organization without any backup.

It’s what keeps him breathing, sometime later, when it feels like half his face got taken off by that damn rocket. Shepard’s face looms over him as she shouts something he can’t quite make out. Everything’s a little blurry. He thinks he might be crying a little bit.

He thinks _Shepard_ might be crying a little bit, and that’s—wow. That’s new. And incredibly touching, to be honest.

So he repeats it in his head, over and over, like a chant, or a prayer.

He’ll pull through for her. _He’ll pull through for her._

It’s the least he can do for a friend.

And he does – a little banged up, maybe, but he pulls through mostly intact.

“You’re one tough son-of-a-bitch, Garrus, I’ll give you that,” she tells him later, as they sit in the starboard lounge and watch the endless expanse of space drift by them.

“Not as tough as you, or so I’ve heard.” He looks over at Shepard – her arms awkwardly crossed in front of her, almost as if she’s trying to shrink into her seat. “I don’t think I’d survive dying.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it anyhow,” she says, eyes fixed firmly on the shutter controls.

“Noted,” he says, just a fraction hesitant. “I wouldn’t recommend getting a rocket in the face, either.”

“Noted,” she says, a little too strained, but she’s trying. _They’re_ trying.

“So,” he says, trying for light-hearted. “Heat sinks, right?”

“I _know,”_ she says, playing up the exasperation for drama. “When did _that_ happen?”

He chuckles, a gravelly sound stuck in his throat. Laughing still hurts. “A year, maybe a year and a half ago?” He tries to remember, for her sake, but he can’t deny that it’s a little fun, reintroducing her into the galaxy. “They phased out all the old cooldown models about eight months ago.”

“Did you know,” she says, laughing, “when Miranda woke me up and started bossing me around, telling me to get my gear and my gun, the very first thing I said to her was, _‘What the fuck is a thermal clip?’”_ She cuts herself off with a laugh. “I can’t believe it,” she says. “Shooting those old cooldown models without getting burned was an _art form,_ you know? Can’t believe they got rid of it for _fucking heat sinks.”_

He gives her a half-grin, remembering. “You almost get crushed under bits of burning Reaper and come out fine, but I remember when you took off your gloves in the medbay afterwards your hands looked like you’d stuck them in a pot to boil.”

“It was _one time,”_ she says defensively. “And we were both working our guns overtime that day.”

“Yeah,” he says, slouching lower into his seat. “We were. Guess Saren was one tough son-of-a-bitch too, huh?”

 _“Please,_ no,” she says. “If I find out Saren survived death too, I’m quitting and moving to Andromeda.”

“Set up a nice little house on a beach?” he says, grinning.

“And drink as many fruity drinks with little umbrellas that I want,” she says, mirroring his smile. They lapse into a comfortable silence, Garrus watching the stars and Shepard seemingly counting the panels on the ceiling.

“So,” she says into the stillness. “A suicide mission, huh?”

He snorts. “You say that like fighting Saren was a walk in the park.”

“I guess,” she says, shrugging. “But don’t you think—Garrus, don’t you think this is a little bigger than both of us?”

“Well,” he muses, drawing out the word. “You came back from the dead and I survived a rocket to the face. And we also took down a Reaper. I’d say we have a pretty good track record at dealing with things bigger than both of us.”

She laughs, the orange scars on her cheeks stretching as she grins.

“Whatever happens,” he assures her, “we’ll go through it together.”

It feels right, somehow, saying it out loud.

She smiles – softer than he’s seen since they’ve found each other again; for a second she’s almost like she’d been on the old Normandy; like the easy, confident Shepard he’d come to know and respect – and says: “Just like old times?”

He grins. “Exactly.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the curious, the title comes from a wonderful poem on friendship by Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye called "An Origin Story," in particular the following lines:
> 
> "Friend, I want to be the mirror that reminds you to love yourself.  
> I want to be the air in your lungs that reminds you to breathe easy.  
> When the walls come down, when the thunder rumbles,  
> When nobody else is home, hold my hand,  
> And I promise, I won’t let go."


	2. Ryncol Therapy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obligatory Post-Horizon chapter. Possible trigger warning for drinking.

It _probably_ isn't actually ryncol.

Garrus suspiciously eyes the bottle Shepard is holding. Can humans even digest ryncol? He makes a mental note to ask Mordin about it. He hopes he remembers it in the morning. He hopes _Shepard_ is in a state to remember _anything_ in the morning, particularly the very pertinent fact that they’re due to pick up Tali from Haestrom in approximately twelve hours.

As it is, she can barely remember her own name, let alone a certain Alliance marine and the shitstorm that was Horizon.

Shepard is ridiculously, _hilariously_ drunk. She absolutely _reeks_ of alcohol; it had probably taken more than normal – _way_ more; it must have been the cybernetics – for her to get to this point, but here she is, drunk off her ass and demanding to know how many times he can say _'calibrations'_ in one minute.

Garrus sighs; he'd been intending to do some _actual_ calibrating – the Normandy's built-in defense programs keep messing with his algorithms – but someone needs to look after Shepard, and he knows they'd both rather it was him than any of the other Cerberus personnel.

She’s too drunk to walk, so he hoists her onto his back, careful not to poke her eyes out with his crest, and starts trudging through the – thankfully empty – mess. It’s no mean feat; Shepard wriggles in his grip, her arms scrabbling for purchase on his armor.

“Thanksss, Garrussss,” she drawls out.

He grunts, shifting his hold so as not to drop her.

“Heeeeey, Garrus.”

“What?”

And then she’s singing – more like screaming; Shepard is apparently no better a singer than she is a dancer – into his ear: _“Did I ever tell you you’re my heeeeeerooooooo?”_

Garrus is very definitely not blushing when he sees Miranda poke her head out of her office to watch the ruckus.

_“You’re everything I wish I could beeeeeeeee.”_

_No,_ he thinks. _I’m not, believe me._

Shepard is still singing as he hurries to the lift and practically growls at EDI: “Deck 1.”

 _“I can fly higher than an eagle,”_ Shepard mumbles, softer now, apparently running out of steam. “ _You are the wind beneath my wings . . .”_

He hauls her up to her cabin, and for the first time he's thankful there's an AI on board, because Shepard is too out of it to key in her passcode herself. At least she’s stopped singing.

“Thanks, EDI,” he mumbles to empty air. He jumps and nearly drops Shepard when EDI’s blue hologram pops into existence at the terminal by the door.

“Thank _you,_ Officer Vakarian,” she says, and he can swear there’s amusement in her computerized tone, most likely at his expense.

He sighs, heaving Shepard’s limp form across the room. “C'mon Shepard, time to get you to bed.”

“Gaaaarrrrusss,” she slurs. “Appreciate it, but I'm not inter—intres—you’re not my type.”

 _This,_ Garrus thinks, _is not the shit he signed up for. “Spirits,_ Shepard, how much did you _drink?_ _”_

Shepard groans as she flops down horizontally across the mattress. “Not enough,” she whispers, sober for just a moment.

“Oh, _Shepard,”_ he sighs, shaking his head. “Try to get some rest, alright? We'll be in Haestrom before 1200h.”

He makes to leave, but a soft mumble of his name stops him in his tracks.

“Yeah?”

“How'd you know it was me, back on Omega?” Shepard says in a muffled whisper, half of her face pressed in to the mattress. “Hell, why'd you follow me, anyway?”

He didn’t, not at first. He wonders, briefly, if she hadn’t known herself at first either. How do you look at yourself in the mirror, knowing half of you was cybernetics and the other half previously dead?

“Well,” he says, doing what he does best: bullshitting his way out of every mess he’s ever been in. “You were the only person I knew who had a habit of showing up when there was trouble. And you were doing some good. Crazy, but good. That's definitely the Shepard I know.”

She’s quiet for so long he thinks she might have fallen asleep. When she whispers again, it catches him off guard.

“Thanks, Garrus,” she says. “For trusting me.”

 _Well, someone’s gotta do it,_ he thinks. _Especially if she can’t do it herself._

“Couldn't help it if I tried, Shepard.”

And spirits help him, he means every word.

“Garrus?”

“Yeah?”

“I wish Kaidan could, too,” she says, and sighs as if she’s the most broken-hearted person in the galaxy.

“I know, Shepard,” he says, gentle. “Get some rest.”

He hesitates at the door, trying to ascertain if she’ll stay put and not do anything stupid – _stupid-er_ – but Shepard is strangely quiet, staring at the passing stars overhead as she clutches a bottle of – yes, that's levo-based, thank the spirits for small favors – what may or may not be krogan ryncol.

He heaves a defeated sigh before he walks back to the bed and collapses next to her, staring up at the stars with her.

"Credit for your thoughts?" he asks.

She frowns, long fingers drumming against the neck of her almost-empty bottle.

“Space is scary,” she mumbles, and he can’t tell if she’s blushing from inebriation or embarrassment.

He looks up at the stars and wonders: first, why the _hell_ had Cerberus installed a skylight in her quarters? It was a major structural weakness, if you ask him, and second, what had gone through her head while her suit leaked oxygen, drifting cold and alone over frozen Alchera?

“I’m scared of a lot of things,” he tells her. “Getting shot, getting blown up, getting eaten by rahcni, getting abducted by the Collectors…”

The left corner of her mouth tilts up. “They’re only taking humans.” She drops her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I heard that from Miranda. Don’t tell her I said anything.”

He grins. “I’m on a human ship, working for a human terrorist organization. Hell, with just the amount of time I spend with you, I’m probably at least 60% human at this point.”

“That’s not how it works!” she says scoldingly, before bursting into a fit of giggles.

“Yeah, well,” he says. “They’d probably just consider me human by association, or something.”

She snorts indelicately, before sighing. “I can’t believe I’m actually pals with a turian.”

“I know,” he says. “Me neither. It took a lot of work to look past the creepy five fingers, flat feet, and backwards-jointed legs, you know.”

She laughs, shoving at him ineffectually, before basking for a moment in the comfortable silence.

“But I’m still here,” he tells her, watching their little slice of space zip by them through the window.

“Yeah,” she says. “You are.”

“You wanna know how I do it?” he says, grinning.

She grins back, apparently caught in the game. “Tell me your secret, oh great Archangel.”

“Whenever I’m getting shot at – or about to get eaten, or staring down at that hideous floating Collector we saw – I just take comfort in the fact that . . . you’re getting shot at right along with me.”

She laughs, letting go of the bottle, and he barely catches it before it rolls off the bed. He sets it down gently on the floor as he joins her, chuckling.

“And you know what?” he says, settling back down beside her.

“What?” she says.

“It goes both ways. If a Collector is dragging you away, I’ll grab onto your leg and get dragged right along with you. If you have to face the Council, I’ll be sweating bullets there next to you. And if you’re scared of space, well . . . just look to your six and I’ll be right there spinning around with you in zero-G.”

“That is the sweetest suicide pact I’ve ever heard,” she says, smiling.

“We’re going on a suicide mission, anyway. Might as well.”

She smiles wider, checking his shoulder with her own. “No one else I’d rather go through hell with, Garrus.”

He grins, mandibles flaring wide. “No one else I’d do it for, Shepard.”

 


	3. Interfere / Intercede / Intervene

Garrus wakes up from a nightmare, feverish and sweaty, his clothes sticking uncomfortably to his skin.

At first it had been the usual – the guilt, the ghosts, the grief – but then it had turned to seeing Shepard’s corpse on the floor of the Ward, bleeding red at Sidonis’ feet.

And Garrus had been holding the gun.

He storms out of the battery in only his civvies and heads for the mess. He needs water, or coffee, or perhaps something stronger.

What he gets is Shepard, also in her civvies, drinking coffee as she looks over a datapad. The mess is quiet, the crew all either asleep or on shore leave, so she looks up immediately when she hears his footsteps hurrying down the corridor.

“Wondered when you’d show up,” she says, putting down the datapad and casually taking a sip of her drink.

Garrus frowns, still in a terrible mood from the dream and the day’s events.

“I still don’t want to talk about it,” he snaps. He wonders if he ought to feel guilty for taking out his frustrations on her, but Shepard only nods, calm as she’d been when she was standing in his line of fire.

“So we won’t talk about it.” She rises and makes her way to the lift. “Come on.”

It’s almost funny how automatic his reaction is, between the sleep-deprivation and the tumult of emotions in his chest, but he falls into step beside her as she leads him up through the CIC and out of the Normandy, not stopping as they head through the Citadel docks and straight to the skycar lot.

She swipes her credit chit at the terminal to rent the nearest one, and briefly he wonders how much cash Cerberus is throwing at her. Not that he’d ever think she was doing all this for the money, but he does wonder, sometimes, how she can afford to give him the latest scope or buy Tali the best omni-tool or supply Grunt with all the noodles he wants.

He only stops her when she opens the driver’s side door.

“I’m driving,” he insists. She raises a brow.

“I’m pretty sure I’m in a better state to drive than you are,” she challenges, pointedly eyeing his rumpled clothes.

“I’m still the better driver,” he says, slipping into the driver’s seat as Shepard slides into the passenger side, chuckling.

They don’t talk, as she promised. Garrus just drives through the Wards, the brightly flashing signs dimmed by the tinted windows, leaving them cocooned in shadows and silence.

His attention is split – half his mind on the road and the other half still replaying the moment Shepard stepped in between him and his target. He had been _furious;_ he’d asked her not to interfere.

 _She didn’t,_ a voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Shepard insists. _She was only intervening for your sake. Acting in blind hatred is not justice._

Garrus internally scoffs at his Shepard-conscience. Matter of perspective. Doubtless if he’d been able to talk to Sidonis, _he’d_ say she was only _interceding_ on his behalf.

And the truth that Garrus doesn’t want to acknowledge is that he doesn’t know which one of them – if any – is right. _Damn **perspective,**_ he thinks, _painting everything in shades of muted gray._

Tension rolls off of him, seemingly filling the skycar until Garrus thinks he’ll suffocate if he doesn’t say anything.

"You're too soft, Shepard," he grits out through clenched teeth. He can still see Sidonis walking away in his mind’s eye.

"One of us has to be," she says.

“We’re soldiers,” he argues. “We don’t have the luxury of shying away from the hard things that need doing.”

“Do you think he needed to die?”

A pause.

“Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.” And then: “I still want to shoot him.”

“So why didn’t you?” she asks, voice low. Garrus glances over at her and sees her looking out the window, her face shifting colors as the neon signs flash by them.

He grits his teeth, grip tightening on the steering wheel. “You were in the way.”

_—Shepard’s corpse on the floor of the Ward, bleeding red—_

“You still could’ve taken the shot.”

_“You were in the way.”_

He'd take a bullet for Shepard. That's a fact.

She's saved him more times than he can count, in more ways than one, so of course he'd do the same for her.

Getting shot? Easy.

Shooting _at_ her – _through her_ – well.

He feels incredibly guilty about it, but in the split second after she’d stepped between him and Sidonis, he’d considered it.

“God knows your ego doesn’t need any more stoking,” she says, shaking him out of his reverie. “But we both know damn well that you still could’ve made that shot.”

“But—you—” he sighs. “Yeah, maybe I could’ve.”

_“So why didn’t you?”_

Because he might’ve shot her.

Because Sidonis was good as dead, anyway.

And then, faster:

Because he doesn’t know if shooting Sidonis is the justice he needs anymore.

Because, even though Shepard probably doesn’t get what he’s going through, if there’s anyone else in this galaxy who _does,_ it’s that traitorous bastard of a turian. All of it – the guilt, the ghosts, the grief, only the one other person still alive after that whole disaster could even hope to understand what he’s going through.

Because Garrus thinks, _maybe Sidonis feels betrayed too._ If Garrus had been more careful, more vigilant – if Garrus had been _better,_ could he have prevented Sidonis from being put in a situation where he was forced to give up the others to save himself?

 _“Stop that,”_ Shepard says. “You’re beating yourself up again, I know it.”

It’s useless to deny it. “What would you have done?” he asks instead.

“With Sidonis?”

“With . . . everything, I guess. If it was you, what would you have done?”

She pauses, thinking, and then heaves a deep sigh. “I can’t really say, Garrus. I’ve thought about it, and wondered: what if _you’d_ betrayed _me?_ If _my_ squad got killed because of you, could I shoot _you?_ Even if you were guilty without question?”

He startles at this. It’s not what he expected. “Could you?” he asks, curious.

She’s silent for the span of several heartbeats, before she whispers, raw and honest: “Not without letting it change me.”

And it hangs there, between them: _I’m not letting this change **you,** either._

“In any case,” she says, a self-depreciating grin on her face, “I think I’ve changed enough for a lifetime – for _two_ lifetimes – don’t you?”

He grins back, settling into their easy, familiar rhythm. “I don’t know,” he says. “You’re still the same where it matters, to me.”

“How so?”

“Still the same shitty driver Shepard I know, that’s for sure.”

She laughs, and then he starts chuckling, too – her amusement too infectious in the small confines of the skycar.

“You’re still the same where it matters to me too, Garrus,” she says. “And I think . . . I think you know that too, deep down.”

He grunts, keeping his eyes on the road. They lapse back into comfortable silence.

“Do you still want to shoot him?” she asks after a while.

“Kind of.”

“Are you going to?”

A pause. “. . . No.”

“Can I know why?”

“I . . . I don’t know myself either, Shepard. I need more time to think about it.”

“Okay,” she says, hardly batting an eyelash. “Take all the time you need.”

“Thanks,” he says. And then: “Shepard?”

“Yeah?”

“Can we . . . can we drive a bit longer?”

She smiles. “As long as you want, buddy.”

Garrus grins, watching as Shepard settles comfortably into her seat next to him, easy as anything, before he kicks up the gear and keeps on driving.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friendship goes both ways, you know?


	4. Endgame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If any of you were waiting on the Tali/Garrus bits, well here you go.

“Need a spare heat sink?” Garrus asks, coming up behind Shepard as the rest of the squad take their places holding the line.

“God, I wish I didn’t,” she says, smiling tiredly. “Fighting through a who-knows-how-old Collector base is _exactly_ the situation that calls for cooldown weapons.”

He chuckles, the sound barely carrying further than the space between them. “Well,” he sighs. “This is it. You ready?”

“Honestly? No. You?”

He shrugs. “Not really.”

“You haven’t talked to your dad?”

“Not since Omega. You haven’t talked to Kaidan?”

“I was going to send an email, but—I don’t know. I just ended up not doing it.” She frowns. “Did you at least talk to Tali?”

“What?” he startles. “No, I— _no._ Of course not.”

“Oh my _god,”_ Shepard says, rolling her eyes. “Are you serious?”

“Look,” Garrus says, bristling. “You’re hardly one to talk; you didn’t talk to Kaidan either—”

“Maybe that’s because Kaidan probably _hates me?”_ she challenges.

“As if _that_ could ever stop you. What am I supposed to tell Tali, anyway?”

“Uh, _the truth?”_

“Which is?” Tali says, coming up behind them. Garrus almost jumps, his grip tightening around the barrel of his rifle as Tali takes her place with them. When he looks over to Shepard, she’s wearing a predatory grin, the dim light glinting ominously off the barrel of her gun.

“Should I give you two a moment?” she says, at the same time Tali asks:

“You wanted to tell me something, Garrus?”

“Well, that’s—you—I just—” he glances over at Shepard, a few steps away, checking her gun and very pointedly not looking at him. Her smirk gives her away, though.

_Damn it._

He looks back at Tali and the sharp shape of her eyes just barely visible through her helmet steals the rest of the words from his throat. “Um—well—”

_“Yes?”_ she says, drawing out the word, almost teasing. Why couldn’t there be Collectors dropping out of the sky when he actually needs it?

“So this is it, huh?” he says.

“Okay, and . . . ?”

“And . . . I’m glad you’re here.”

“Better. Getting there,” Tali says, the smile evident in her voice. _“And…?”_

“And . . . you’re, um. I . . . think . . . you’re . . .”

_“Yes?”_

“. . . a great shot. With a shotgun. Very impressive.”

There’s a moment of silence as Tali, who had been leaning forward to hear him, leans back slowly, her fingers tapping against her shotgun.

And then Shepard makes a loud, irritating buzzing sound, and when he looks at her she’s scowling, one hand giving him a thumbs down.

“I see,” Tali says, clipped.

“Er, yes,” he says, for lack of anything else.

Shepard gives a frustrated groan before she says, “Alright. I get it. Shepard to the rescue, then.” She cocks her gun and switches to her Commander voice. “Form up.”

Garrus settles easily into position at Shepard’s six as they begin the long trek through the dark of the Collector base.

“For what it’s worth, Tali,” Shepard says as she ducks behind cover, scanning the area ahead before she signals the all-clear. “Being a good shot is pretty high praise coming from Garrus.”

“Well, I _guess,”_ Tali says sarcastically, cocking her shotgun with a little more force than necessary.

“Erm, sorry,” Garrus mumbles sheepishly as Shepard signals for them to take cover again.

“You’re lucky you’re cute, Vakarian,” Tali hisses as she slides into cover beside him.

A pause.

_“What?”_

“Incoming!” Shepard shouts, and he shakes his head and loses himself in the roar of gunfire and explosions and the steady cadence of Shepard’s orders.

Slowly, surely, they push forward, gaining more and more ground from the Collectors with every shot and grenade and tech burst.

Tali is lightning on the battlefield – quick on her feet and relentless with her shotgun, deploying drone after drone that sends electricity arcing from one enemy to the next. She flashes across his scope intermittently – a blur of graceful purple that sends his heart leaping into his throat with worry and something like admiration.

And if Tali is lightning, Shepard—Shepard is a full-blown _hurricane,_ taking down enemies consecutively with her rifle or her omni-blade or a well-timed incineration, her face pinched in concentration as she dashes across the field, and beneath that, a simmering anger that rolls just under the surface.

She draws close to his position once, intercepting a group of husks that came too close for him to aim at properly. He hears her muttering quietly to herself with each one she takes down: _“For Crosby . . . and Tanaka . . . and Draven . . . and Pressly . . .”_

Shepard is _furious,_ he can tell. She rages across the battlefield, taking out all the grief and anger she must’ve been carrying all this time, refining her emotions into a weapon sharp enough to kill.

And Garrus? Garrus just wants to make sure the two people closest to him make it out of here alive. So he ignores the sting of his rifle kicking back against his shoulder, focusing on the husks surrounding Tali or the Collectors flanking Shepard, and shoots and shoots and shoots until every last danger to them is down for the count.

They take one of the platforms to the central chamber, and what they find stops them dead in their tracks.

“Oh, _keelah,”_ Tali breathes, as the unfinished Reaper hangs above them, being fed genetic paste from the tubes like some twisted fetus.

He looks over at Shepard, frighteningly silent, as her wide eyes take it all in. He can see the horror flashing in her eyes, and the guilt – Freedom’s Progress, Horizon, all those worlds, all those _people_ she hadn’t been able to save—

“Hey,” he says, nudging her shoulder as he replaces his gun’s heat sink with a forceful snap. “Let’s give them hell.”

He watches as the fire in her eyes burns fiercer than ever before. “They’ll _wish_ for hell before I’m through with them.”

Garrus spends the rest of the fight with his life flashing before his eyes.

_If I make it out of this,_ he thinks, shooting a Collector that had been aiming for Tali, _I’ll talk to dad. I’ll video call Solana, I’ll go home and see mom—_

Shepard shouts a warning as the Reaper baby claws its way onto the platform.

_I’ll tell Tali,_ he thinks _. If we make it out alive I’ll tell her for sure—_

And then the world tilts, knocking Garrus off his feet, and he thinks: _Crap._

He’s falling, falling, falling—

He thinks: _I should’ve told Tali._

And then Shepard is there – _Whatever happens, we’ll go through it together – Just like old times?_ – and she’s hauling him up and throwing him back onto the platform, where he lands with a thud and blacks out for a split second after he hits his head on some rubble.

He comes to with Shepard’s face hovering worriedly over him, and he waves her away. “Where’s—” he croaks out, but she’s already sprinting away to the other side of the platform, hauling bits of rubble off of Tali’s prone form.

His heart leaps into his throat for a moment – _no no no no NO_ – but she sits up, steadier than he expected, although she winces as she moves, her hand flying to her left leg.

“Can you run?” he hears Shepard ask as he makes his way over to them.

Tali tries to move her leg and winces.

“That’s a no, then,” Shepard says, sighing.

“Go,” Tali says suddenly, whipping out her shotgun. “I’ll cover you—”

“No!” Garrus half-shouts at the same time Shepard says, in a hard voice:

“No one’s getting left behind.”

He’d sing her praises, just for that.

“Carry her,” she orders, swapping her rifle for her submachine gun. “I’ll provide cover fire for all of us.”

He only very briefly hesitates at the thought of actually _touching_ Tali before he’s pulling her arms around him and hoisting her onto his back, sore limbs be damned. They run, racing through the twisted paths of the Collector base, and Garrus tries not to look for familiar faces among the fallen and focuses instead on the rapid-fire of Shepard’s gun beside him, the soft sound of Tali’s breath in his ear, and the steady one-two of his heart as they make their escape.

He doesn’t stop as he emerges into light, bounding across the rugged surface as he sprints for the Normandy, barely pausing as he clutches Tali tighter and leaps—

—landing on the Normandy’s platform with inches to spare.

He sets Tali down, pulling her further from the edge of the airlock and unthinkingly presses his forehead against her helmet, both of them breathing hard.

_“Shepard!”_

He hears Joker’s shout over the pounding of his heart, and he turns to see her still on the ground.

He thinks, for one wild second, that she won’t make it. His muscles tense automatically, ready to jump back down for her.

_No one’s getting left behind,_ she’d said.

_Not even you,_ he thinks.

When she jumps, it’s an automatic thing – his hand reaches out for hers on instinct, five fingers and three fingers interlocking _,_ easy as anything, as he pulls her back to safety.

 


	5. Nightmare Unending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's . . . wow, I realized there's not a whole lot of Shepard in this chapter. Their friendship still plays a part though. And look! Minor characters! :D

Garrus is with the Primarch when Earth goes dark.

They’re looking over the schematics of the Thanix he’d drawn up from what he remembers, debating the possibility of installing them in key dreadnoughts, when an aide rushes into the room and informs them that the comm buoys linking Palaven and Earth are down.

Garrus’ grip tightens on the datapad he’s holding.

 _Oh, spirits,_ is the first thing he thinks. _Shepard._

Khar’shan had gone silent just days before, and Garrus can’t help the sickening feeling in his gut when he thinks of what might be happening just the next system over.

The next day, Taetrus falls.

And then Palaven, two days after that.

Garrus is thankful that he’s gotten into the habit of keeping his gun with him at all times – they’re barely given a moment to gather the datapads and OSDs with the most essential information before he, Fedorian, and a number of other key personnel are being loaded into the Hierarchy’s swiftest frigate available and shipped to Menae.

The air in the bunker is tense, all eyes on the screen as they watch drone footage of Reapers engaging the turian fleet.

“Shit,” Resvirix growls, witnessing the scale of the force that takes the planet by storm, forcing Coronati to retreat.

“It’s—too much,” Corinthus says, sighing heavily. “It’s too much for just us—”

“Then we’ll find more of _‘us’_ ,” Fedorian says, steel in his voice. “Get me a line to Sparatus. I’m calling a war summit.”

Hours later, Garrus stands with Victus on a rise overlooking the airfield, watching troops mobilize around them as they take a few seconds to breathe.

“Spirits,” he sighs, gazing up at the curve of Palaven looming above them, the orange splotch that used to be Cipritine casting fiery glow over the field.

“Your family’s still there, aren’t they?” Victus asks quietly.

“Dad was in Cipritine, last I heard,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “My sister, too.”

“Well,” Victus says wryly, only the subharmonics betraying his unease. “Papa Vakarian is one of the toughest sons-of-bitches I know. I think they’ll be fine.”

“Please don’t call my dad ‘Papa Vakarian’,” Garrus says, deadpan. “Sir.”

Victus chuckles, but the quiet sound is drowned out by the boom of Reaper klaxons echoing across the landscape.

“Don’t look so glum, Little Vakarian,” Victus says, grinning when Garrus scowls at _Little Vakarian._ “You haven’t lost them yet.”

“Yeah,” Garrus says, watching the shuttle carrying Fedorian prepare for lift-off. “Yeah, I hope so.”

 _“Spirits,_ son, you look like we’ve already lost the war,” Victus chides.

“It’s nothing, Sir. Just—” Garrus looks up, past the orange glow of Palaven. He locates the bright white glimmer of Aralakh over the horizon, and uses that to find the softer yellow glow of Sol to its right. “My best friend was on Earth,” he admits quietly. “When the Reapers hit. And you know they had a lot less warning than we did.”

Victus is silent for a time, as if he was floundering for words, before he says, gravely: “If they’re a friend of _yours,_ I’m sure they’re giving the Reapers hell as we speak.”

It earns a chuckle from Garrus, who can picture it all too easily. “Yeah, I suppose—”

They watch as Fedorian’s shuttle takes off, hovering in the air for a moment before soaring off. And they watch, stunned, as a read beam from a Reaper slices through it cleanly, sending in falling through the sky in a burning arc.

 _“Spirits have mercy,”_ Victus breathes, as the smoking wreck crashes in the distance.

 _“—rinthus here,”_ Victus’ comm crackles to life. “Requesting status report.”

Garrus and Victus look at each other sadly. “Fedorian’s shuttle got shot down,” Victus replies, hesitant. “I’m sorry.”

There’s silence on the other side of the line.

“Corinthus?” Victus tries again.

“. . . Those _bastards,”_ Corinthus hisses through the comm. “I’ll—”

The sound of shouting and gunfire carries through the line.

“Corinthus?” Victus shouts. “Corinthus, status report!”

“—husks swarming the base,” he replies, followed by the rattle of gunfire. “Requesting assistance!” They hear more shouting, and a shrill _“Bring up the barricade!”_ before the line goes dead.

“Corinthus?” Victus shouts into his comm. “Corinthus! Shit!”

“Orders, Sir?” Garrus asks, snapping Victus back to the situation.

“Go to the main barricade and—”

They hear shouting – closer, this time. The two of them watch helplessly as a harvester swoops overhead, dropping a number of husks and strange, turian-like reaper soldiers just outside the camp.

“Oh, _fuck,_ ” Garrus says.

“Everyone into position!” Victus shouts to the troops, before he shoves Garrus in the direction of Corinthus’ base of operations. “Go! Get those things the _hell_ off my men!”

Garrus sprints down the long path to the main barricade, dispatching the odd husk he encounters along the way. It seems to him that the crashes and booms in the distance increase in volume and frequency, spurring him to pick up the pace. And yet, when he arrives at the main barricade, he’s surprised to find it relatively calm.

“I thought you were getting swarmed by husks?” he demands, turning to the nearest soldier.

“Well, we _were,_ Sir,” the young recruit says nervously. _So young_ , Garrus thinks sadly; _Spirits, he must be fresh out of basic_. “But, well—” the boy adds, gesturing vaguely to where Corinthus is standing, talking to the one human in the entire galaxy whose face Garrus can pick out in a crowd.

_Guess the spirits had mercy after all._

When Shepard turns to him, a cocky grin on her face, saying, “You coming, Garrus?” he falls into step at her six, as if he’d never left at all.

“Are you kidding?” he says, somehow laughing in the middle of this forsaken moon. “I’m right behind you.”

Together it’s almost too easy to make it back to Victus’ base of operations, dispatching the scattered Reaper foot soldiers with hardly any difficulty, even if the new human she’s brought throws in a strange new dynamic to their practiced rhythm.

“There,” he says. “Victus should be just around the—”

They hear the screech of a harvester seconds before they see it fly overhead, dropping a number of husks and two of the lumbering, giant brutes.

“Oh, _fuck,_ ” Shepard says.

“I’ll take the one on the left, you take the one on the right?” he whispers as the three of them huddle behind cover.

“Sounds like a plan,” she says. “James, take care of the rest.”

 _“What?”_ James says, before Garrus and Shepard vault over the barrier and advance, moving to get a clearer shot.

They whittle down the two brutes’ armor, occasionally turning around to toss a grenade or fire a concussive shot at the smaller husks to help James out.

“Yes!” Shepard cries, watching her brute topple like a mountain. Not to be outdone, Garrus takes the time to line up his shot—

—and promptly gets bowled over by a speeding brute.

He’s winded, lying on his back, but he’s surprised to find he isn’t afraid, because any second now—

—and okay, he expects Shepard to save his ass – that’s what friends _do_ – but he doesn’t expect how the ass-saving goes down: Shepard charges forward, slamming into the brute and plunging her omni-blade into its unarmored belly, her eyes burning with rage as she twists it, causing it to stagger back. It gives a final roar as it falls to the ground with a heavy thud.

 _Damn,_ Garrus thinks, _cybernetic implants must really be something else._ She rips out the blade with a squelch, turning to him with panic in her eyes.

“Did I ever tell you,” he says, panting, adrenaline still coursing through his system, “you’re my hero?”

She laughs, breathless, as she helps him up. “Should I start singing?”

He shrugs. “Can’t be worse than hearing those damned Reaper horns.”

She sticks her tongue out, shoving at him playfully. “Come on. You owe me one, so go get me a Primarch, buddy.”

One newly-minted Primarch later, Garrus stands with Shepard as they wait for the shuttle, watching his home burn as it hangs in the sky. He can’t even begin to quantify the destruction, and yet—what had she told Victus? _Double that for Earth?_

And Garrus knows Shepard is only organic – with organic fears and organic limitations, no matter what the rest of the galaxy may think. It’s so obvious now, with the drawn lines on her face illuminated in the orange light.

“Shepard,” he says worriedly. “You okay?”

She shrugs. “Tired, I guess,” she says, rubbing an eye, and it occurs to Garrus that he doesn’t know when _he’s_ last slept, either. “But fine, overall. Something up?”

“Not on _my_ end,” he says, remembering the unbridled _fury_ she’d unleashed on the brute. “What about you? I mean, I always knew you could go toe to toe with anything the Reapers throw at us, but I didn’t expect it to be so _literal_. Were you testing out your fancy cybernetics after six months of incarceration, or do you just like showing off by taking on brutes in close combat?”

Her face falls, crumpling with something like grief and suspiciously like guilt. “Oh. That.”

“Shepard,” he says again. “Are you _okay?”_

She hesitates, biting her lip, before she presses her fists against her eyes and admits: “No. No, I’m not. _God—”_ She exhales forcefully, looking up at the orange splotch on Palaven’s face. “Three days. It’s only been _three_ _days,_ and I’ve already had to leave Anderson behind, and then Kaidan got hurt and—” she cuts herself off, taking a shuddering breath as she hastily wipes away the tears threatening to fall. “I saw that brute going for you and I just thought _‘I’m not letting this war take you, too.’”_

“Oh, _Shepard,”_ he says, slinging an arm around her shoulders. “I’d have thought you’d know by now.” He grins. “You’re going to have to work a lot harder to get rid of _me._ ”

She laughs, and it comes out a bit watery, but she laughs, for real. “I’m counting on it,” she says, throwing an arm across his back, and together they stand there, feeling like the weight of a crumbling galaxy just got a little easier to bear.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I read up on the events of the Reaper War on the Palaven front and like, it's actually really interesting??? Shit, now I wanna write more about Garrus in the six months between ME2 and ME3 aaaaaarrrghhh


	6. Devoted to a Fault

Garrus has always known he’d take a bullet for Shepard.

He’s never questioned it. He doesn’t even really _think_ about it. It’s just there, in the back of his mind, like some core programming: if{Shepard:in danger}; then{Garrus:protect}.

He knows she’d do the same; it’s what friends _do._ Granted, most friends probably don’t get shot as much as they do, but still.

But Garrus has never thought about _taking a_ _shot_ for Shepard. He’s never quite wrapped his head around the possibility that Shepard might not be able to shoot a gun herself. Of course, he’s always been there to provide cover fire when she’d had to do something else other than shoot, but this was different.

The Citadel is burning; Cerberus troops are swarming all over the station, and Thane is bleeding out somewhere in all this mess, but Garrus doesn’t have eyes for anything except Kaidan’s finger on the trigger and the way Shepard’s gun shakes as she aims at her former-lover-turned . . . what, exactly?

Garrus knows she won’t – _can’t_ – take the shot, although Kaidan probably doesn’t know. Hell, Shepard might not even know it herself.

So Garrus decides: he’ll do it. He’ll do it in a heartbeat.

_If{Shepard:in danger}; then{Garrus:protect}._

Shepard orders him and Liara to lower their weapons, but that doesn’t mean he has to drop his guard. He keeps a finger on the trigger even as she talks Kaidan down, anticipating even the slightest change in tension.

He ends up not having to, thankfully, which is a huge relief. He _likes_ Kaidan, despite the whole Horizon shit and his being a little more tight-laced than what Garrus prefers. But it’s still a bit of a revelation, the things that Garrus would do for a friend.

No, for _Shepard._

He lingers by the memorial wall after Shepard puts Thane’s name up, knowing she must feel like shit. This war keeps taking and taking and _taking,_ and sometimes Garrus is scared that there’ll be nothing left of Shepard after, for all that she just gives and gives and gives. He _is_ genuinely glad Kaidan’s here, despite the lingering tension and the sad way they look at each other when they think no one else sees; he knows that if it works out – and if he knows Shepard at all, it _will_ – it’s just about the only thing she’d be willing to take for herself.

Garrus asks her if she could have taken the shot, though he’s almost entirely sure of her answer already. She shakes her head, confirming his theory, and bites her lip. She wonders aloud if it makes her a bad soldier, that there are some sacrifices she can’t make.

He frowns. “We all have our non-negotiables, Shepard. A line we’d never cross. It just differs from person to person.”

She opens her mouth to retort, but pauses as if to process his words.

“You’d have taken the shot,” she says, not a question.

“I . . .” he looks at her, gauging her reaction. “Yeah. I would have.”

She’s quiet for a long while, staring intently at her boots.

“I—I don’t think I could thank you for it,” she admits. “But for what it’s worth you’re probably the only person I couldn’t hate for doing it, either.”

Garrus shrugs. “I’d let you hate me all you want as long as you were alive to do it,” he tells her earnestly. “You’re my non-negotiable number one, Shepard.”

The ghost of a smile plays on her lips, gratitude shining in her eyes. “And here I was thinking I’d have to put the fate of the galaxy before anyone else,” she jokes.

“Shepard, sometimes I think you’re too busy fighting for the galaxy that you forget you’re fighting for yourself, too,” he scolds her.

She chuckles at his tone, before she says: “That’s actually why I keep you around. So you can fight for me when I’m too busy fighting Reapers.”

She runs a finger over the newest plaque on the memorial wall, tracing the letters of Thane’s name, probably imagining if she’d had to put up two plaques today instead of just the one.

“I don’t know if I can afford having non-negotiables in this war,” Shepard admits, “but in case I did, you’re definitely one of them.”

“Yeah,” he says, slinging an arm around her shoulders. “I figured that out when you tackled a brute to save my ass. Got me choked up a little bit there.”

She chuckles, throwing an arm around his shoulders, too. “You’re my best friend, Garrus. I’d take on Harbinger himself if it had got you.”

He startles at that, a little bit. Oh, he’d _known,_ somewhere in the back of his mind, but he’s never heard it said out loud. He didn’t think it needed to be.

He sniffles dramatically. “I could cry right now, honestly.” And then he nuzzles against her hair. “Thanks, Shepard,” he whispers, as plainly and truthfully as he can.

She hums, resting her head contentedly against his shoulder, before she says, grinning: “Did you know . . .” she giggles, “did you know, Kaidan thought we had a _fling?”_

He grins, almost feral. “I didn’t. But speaking of, I’m pretty sure he’s been waiting at the door of starboard lounge for the past five minutes. Should we play it up and see how he reacts?”

Shepard huffs a laugh, pushing him away playfully. “Get out of here before he decides to dump my ass again.” She grins, and says, mock-threatening: “Unless you want Drunk Shepard to make another appearance?”

“No thanks. There are some things I wouldn’t do even if the galaxy depended on it,” he says, laughing. “For what it’s worth,” he adds, “I’m glad I didn’t have to shoot him. He’s . . . good for you.”

“Garrus, is this you _approving_ of my date choices?” she asks, grinning.

“Only because I know you’d actually listen to him if he tells you _‘Don’t drive the Mako off a cliff.’”_

“I’m offended,” she says. “I’ve gotten better since our SR-1 days.”

“You weren’t the one riding backseat when you jumped the Hammerhead over a lava pit. Thank the spirits for Cortez. If you’d had to drive the shuttle we’d be dead before even getting to the drop-point.”

“You’re a real pal, Garrus,” she says, dripping sarcasm.

“I know. Me, friends with a human? Biggest, most potentially fatal mistake of my life.”

Shepard sticks her tongue, grinning. She knows he’s lying.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "IF YOU WANNA BE MY LOVER, YOU GOTTA GET outta my way because if not you're gonna get shot" - Shepard, probably


	7. Spacewalk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brace yourselves, heading into slightly-non-canon-compliant territory.
> 
> Also, possible trigger warning for, uh . . . I'm sorry, I'm not quite sure how to tag it. Trauma? PTSD? Panic attacks . . . ? Something along those lines.

There is _probably_ an easier solution to this.

But with the kind of lives they've led, Garrus doesn't think he and Shepard know what _easy_ really means anymore.

The short of it is: apparently getting spaced is pretty traumatic. Shepard had paled at the idea of doing a spacewalk, no matter how brief, and none of them could really blame her.

“I’ll do it,” he’d offered. It wasn’t such a big deal for him, and if he could take some of the load off his friend, well then, all the better. But Shepard just shook her head sadly and informed him that the Normandy didn’t stock custom turian mag boots.

“So . . . Kaidan? James?” he suggests. “Kaidan would do it in a heartbeat, you know.”

“I . . . know,” she says, hesitant. “But I need both you and Tali on this mission, and it’ll be too dangerous for someone to spacewalk to the geth ship _and_ back to the Normandy.”

He hums. “So take me.”

“What?” she says.

“Take me with you on the spacewalk.”

And so he finds himself here, floating above Shepard's head as she makes her way slowly across the docking tube to the geth dreadnought. Her hand grips tightly – too tightly, he thinks – on the clasp of the safety harness tethering them together as she drags him gently forward like an oversized balloon.

"You know, this is kinda relaxing," he tells her over the comm.

He hears her nervous laughter over the thumping of her mag boots as she presses forward. Garrus shifts his shoulders, the just-in-case jet thruster pack an unfamiliar feeling on his back.

"I don't see how," she says, turning right to avoid the collapsed part of the docking tube. Garrus looks up as the vast expanse of space comes into view.

He whistles appreciatively. "Well, the view's nice, for one. And it's quiet. Peaceful. And nothing's shooting at us yet."

Shepard snorts. _"Yet,"_ she says flatly.

"Shepard, if we aren't getting shot at, are we really living?"

Her laugh comes easier now. They're more than halfway across the tube.

"I'd like to, someday,” she says. “Live without getting shot at, I mean. I think it'd be nice."

"Point." Garrus hums thoughtfully. "Somewhere warm, for me."

"And on dry land?"

"Definitely."

Shepard chuckles, tugging on the tether as she crosses the tube horizontally to avoid another gaping hole.

"Dry land seconded,” she says. “With real air and a real atmosphere. But Kaidan would want somewhere a bit colder, I think."

"And here I was looking forward to us being next-door neighbors," he says.

She snickers. “I can just imagine the neighborhood watch’s reactions when—”

There’s the sound of metal straining, and then a sickening lurch, before suddenly both of them are sent careening as the docking tube detaches. Garrus is disoriented for a moment as they spin, the view changing from stars to metal to the Normandy, but then he meets Shepard’s gaze – her eyes wide and panicked through the dark glass of her helmet – and that’s all it takes for Garrus’ mind to shift into crisis mode.

He uses their momentum, spinning them so Shepard is between him and the door, before he activates the jet thruster. It’s stronger than he anticipated – they slam forcefully against the metal door – but it gets them where he wants them to be.

Shepard’s feet scrabble for a moment against the door before her mag boots do their job and clamp tight to the metal with a final thump.

They’re only given a moment – Garrus holding tightly to Shepard’s shoulders as she breathes hard and fast, one hand on the safety tether and another gripping the edge of his chest plate – before their comms explode with chatter.

“I’ve never been part of the shore party, but was that _normal?”_ That’s Joker.

“Shepard, what was that!?” Kaidan, calling from the CIC.

“Garrus? Shepard? What’s going on?” Tali, waiting at the other entrance for them to let her in.

Shepard’s breathing slows a bit, but it’s still sharper and quicker than normal, so Garrus answers for them.

“What’s a spacewalk without the zero-G part, right?” he says.

Joker answers first. “Well, I _guess,_ ” he says. “Except usually people do that while they’re, you know, _tied to the ship?”_

“Garrus? What happened?” Tali asks. He smiles behind his helmet, her nervous fidgeting practically audible over the comm.

“Docking tube detached. We’re stable now, though,” he assures her. “We’re at the door. Meet you in a minute, Tali.”

“Okay,” she says, a little less nervous than before.

“Shepard? You okay?” Kaidan’s voice filters gently through the line.

Shepard takes a shaky breath. “Yeah,” she says, before she takes a calming exhale through her mouth. “Yeah. We’re good,” she says, a little more steadily.

“We’re good,” Garrus says, assuring.

“We’re good,” she echoes, more sure this time, before she clears her throat and begins speaking in her Commander voice once more. “Entering the geth ship now.”

“Copy that, Commander,” Joker says, signing off.

“Be careful,” Kaidan warns.

“See you in a bit,” Tali says, before the channels go quiet again. Shepard hacks into the panel wordlessly, and the door opens with a hiss.

“Ready?” Garrus asks, gripping the edge of the opening.

“Yeah,” Shepard says.

“One, two, three!” Shepard pulls her boots from the metal platform, leaving them both weightless for a split second, before Garrus swings himself into the doorway, the tether pulling Shepard in behind him. He slams his hand on the control panel once she’s clear, the door sliding shut. The ship’s artificial gravity activates automatically once the door closes, both of them falling onto their feet and trying not to overbalance.

They straighten up, and Garrus unhooks them both from the harness and begins to coil the safety line.

"Garrus?" she says softly as he hooks the rope on his hip.

He hums.

"Thanks. For being here."

"You know me, Shepard. You say _‘Let's storm a Collector ship,’_ I say _‘Let's give them hell._ ’ You say _‘Get in the Mako,’_ I say _‘For the love of the spirits, please let me drive.’"_

Shepard laughs – a whole-body movement – before she draws her gun and starts to move forward.

“And if I say, _‘I’ll totally tell Tali you have a crush on her,’_ you say . . . ?”

“I’ll say, _‘Fuck you, Shepard, I’m telling Kaidan about Shenko the hamster.’_ ”

“You _wouldn’t,_ ” Shepard says, gasping dramatically.

“Oh, I _would._ I’d have thought you knew by now, Shepard. I don’t play fair.”

She grins. “Is that a challenge?”

“You know it.”

She hums thoughtfully, the devious glint in her eyes visible through her helmet.

“First one to hack the next door gets to sit next to Tali on the shuttle back?”

Garrus blinks. “What?”

Shepard is already running towards the console, her impish laughter trailing along behind her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually the first chapter I wrote, and the rest of the fic came along when I started wondering how they got to this point in their friendship. It's still my fave chapter in this fic, so I hope you guys liked it! :3
> 
> I've also noticed an influx of (new? new-ish?) readers, so: HI GUYS! Thank you for reading up to this point, and I hope you stick around for the last few chapters. :)


	8. Hopeless Romantics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuing the slight non-compliance to canon, with some added Tali/Garrus and Kaidan/Shepard interactions.

“Come _on,_ Garrus,” Shepard says laughingly as she bodily drags him out of the forward battery. He whimpers as swarms of Alliance engineers swarm into the room they’d left, bringing out tools and wires and scanning every inch with their omni-tools.

“They’re going to mess something up and you know it,” he protests as they stumble into the lift.

“Try not to think about it,” she says. “We get to go on shore leave!”

 _“Shore leave,”_ he scoffs. “Mark my words, Shepard; we’ll get into some kind of trouble within the next twenty-four hours.”

“Then enjoy the few hours of calm before the inevitable mayhem,” she says. “I heard Tali wants to go shopping. Why don’t you go with her?”

He stumbles as they make their way down the gangway and exit into D24. “I don’t think that’s—”

“Hey, Tali! Garrus says he wants to go shopping too!”

Tali looks up as they enter the docking bay, stepping away from the window where she’d been watching ships pass by.

“Really?” she says. “I didn’t expect it, but I’ll be glad for the company.”

“Great!” Shepard says, slapping Garrus on the shoulder. “Well, I should go. Have fun, you two!” And then she disappears into the crowd before Garrus can decide whether to hug her or strangle her.

“Looking for anything in particular?” Tali asks him as they walk towards the skycar lot. “I was planning to check out some stores in the Strip, but if you want to go somewhere else—”

“That’s fine,” Garrus says, too quickly. “I’m not really looking for anything special.”

Tali giggles as she swipes her credit chit at the terminal. “You’re such a heartbreaker, Vakarian.”

_What?_

“What?” he says, stumbling to keep up as she slides into the passenger seat.

“Oh, nothing,” she says playfully. “Get in, Garrus. We don’t have all day.”

It’s nice, he admits grudgingly to himself. He’s always liked spending time with Tali, and he finds himself smiling wider and more often as the hours slip by. Maybe Shepard had actually done him a good turn.

They hunt down the dextro chocolates Tali had been looking for. She’d acquired a taste for them after Garrus had given her some of his, and she’s dead set on having more of them before the inevitable mayhem that was fighting the Reapers.

“I am _not,”_ she says, carefully mashing up another piece of chocolate before popping it into her suit’s filtration tube, “resigning myself to surviving solely on _nutrient paste_ just before going into a battle to save the galaxy.”

And it’s so damn _easy_ to laugh as they walk down the Strip, even as they pass by PSAs for disaster preparedness and soldiers on shore leave discussing their battles. He watches Tali light up with each new sweet she tries, and it makes him feel light and light-headed, like he’s floating in zero-G with only the bare minimum of oxygen to keep him alive.

He’s shocked back into hyper-awareness when Tali grips his wrist and drags him forward. She leads him through the crowd, talking excitedly as they approach what the overhead sign proclaims to be _Ryuusei’s Sushi Bar,_ stopping in front of the huge aquarium window.

“I used to love going here just to watch the fish,” she says, a little shy. “I’d tell myself that one day I’ll be enough of a somebody to get a seat here for dinner. You think we could go, after this whole war?”

“Sure,” he says easily. “If Shepard isn’t enough of a somebody to get us all seats here after the war, I don’t know who is.”

Tali slips her hand into his and says, voice low: “I wasn’t thinking of bringing Shepard, Garrus.”

 _Oh shit,_ Garrus thinks, watching the blue light ripple gently across her faceplate. _Sorry, Shepard, but I think this is my new favorite spot on the Citadel._

“Tali—”

The rattle of gunfire fills the air, before a flood of people start stampeding out of the restaurant. Immediately, Garrus pushes Tali behind him, pressing them both against the glass of the aquarium window to avoid the crush of bodies around them.

“What’s going on?” he hears Tali shouting over the din.

“I don’t know—”

There’s the sound of shattering glass behind them, followed by an all-too-familiar voice screaming, and he turns just in time to see a black-clad human falling through the aquarium as the water rapidly drains into the lower levels of the Ward.

They pause, stunned.

“Was that—” Tali asks.

“Yeah,” he says, sighing. “It was.”

Another pause.

“Well, shore leave was fun while it lasted,” Tali says, resigned.

“Yeah.”

“Garrus?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you going to let me go anytime soon?”

And then Garrus realizes he’s still got her trapped against the window, one arm slung across her torso as he grips her wrist from when he’d pulled her back earlier. He practically jumps away.

“Right! Sorry!” he says. “Anyway, Shepard probably needs our help, so, um.” He clears his throat nervously. “We should go.”

A pause.

Did . . . did he just say that? _Spirits,_ why the _fuck_ did he just say that?

This is Shepard’s fault, he’s sure of it.

Tali snickers as she steps around him, moving to crouch by the door of the restaurant and scanning the room.

“Six mercs,” she says, as he peers carefully around the doorway behind her. “Should be easy.”

“We don’t have guns, Tali,” he reminds her. She looks up at him, her omni-tool casting an ominous orange glint across her mask.

“Don’t need one,” she says, the smirk evident in her voice. With a few swipes, she sends out her drone, drawing the mercs’ attention. Garrus almost pities them when one particularly stupid one shoots at it, destroying it in a few shots. It explodes, sending all six flying across the room in different directions and slamming into the walls and floor.

“Well,” he says, impressed. “That solves that.”

Garrus picks up a discarded Mantis rifle as Tali relieves the nearest unconscious merc of his pistol. He leans over the hole in the floor and notices with great relief that there doesn’t seem to be a crumpled-up human corpse in a little black dress at the bottom.

“I am not jumping three stories down a hole in the floor,” Tali says, coming up behind him.

“Me neither,” he says. “Not even for Shepard.” He activates his omni-tool, fingers ghosting quickly over the screen. “We should alert the others. Kaidan needs to know—”

An alert pops up on the screen, and he tabs over to it and is surprised to hear Joker’s voice come over the comm.

“Garrus, you there? Shepard—”

“I know. Tali and I are at the sushi place right now. Does Kaidan—”

“You were _there_ and you didn’t _help?”_ Joker cries indignantly.

“Look, we only got here in time to see Shepard fall through a fish tank. Not like we had a whole lot of time to jump into the fight.”

Joker pauses in his stream of grumbling about _‘galactic heroes leaving the PWD to fend for himself’._

“Shepard did _what?”_ And then: “You know what, never mind. That isn’t even close to being the weirdest thing that’s happened to her. Anyway, Kaidan knows. He’s on his way to her right now. I’ll send over the coordinates for the NavPoint.”

“Copy that. Thanks, Joker.” Garrus links up with both Shepard’s and Kaidan’s comm channels as he and Tali rush through the kitchen doors and down the flight of stairs leading to the storage area below. “Garrus here,” he says into the comm. “Joker filled me and Tali in. We’re headed your way.”

“Good,” her voice crackles over the line, interspersed with bouts of gunfire. “Things are getting a little dicey.”

 _What,_ he thinks, _only a little?_

He chuckles. He knows better than to believe her. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

 _“I_ would,” Kaidan grumbles. “Just _one day,_ Shepard. _One day_ where I don’t have to worry about you getting shot. Is that too much to ask?”

“Hey,” she answers back, gunfire sounding in the background, “you think _I_ wanted to spend my shore leave getting shot at?”

“I’d have thought you’d be used to it by now, Kaidan,” Tali chimes in. “I mean, this is _Shepard_ we’re talking about.”

Garrus hums as he and Tali jump to a platform overlooking the skycar lot across the way. “Tali has a point, but even I’d draw the line if _my_ girlfriend _fell through a fish tank.”_

Silence.

“She did what,” Kaidan says flatly.

Just then, an alarm blares through the ward, and Tali hurries to the edge of the platform closest to where the sound originated from.

“Garrus!” she says. “I think that’s Shepard!”

He slides over next to her, and sure enough, his best friend is on the level just below them, taking cover as mercs swarm from the other side of the bridge. He quickly snipes the gunman on the balcony above, and then takes out another who was closing in on her.

“Garrus,” Shepard asks, and he sees her peering around the wall she’s huddled behind. “Was that you?”

“And me!” Tali says, just as her drone takes down the mercs’ engineer.

“You know we’ve got your back, Shepard,” Garrus chuckles, lining up another shot.

“Oh wow, hey, isn’t this fun?” Shepard says, advancing across the bridge. “It’s like some weird kind of double date!”

“If you wanted to go on a date, Shepard, you should’ve just _asked,”_ Kaidan says.

“I think it’s sweet that you get to rescue Shepard, Kaidan,” Tali says, directing her drone to distract several more mercs so Garrus and Shepard can take them out.

“And also kinda hot,” Shepard adds.

“Woah, _woah,”_ Garrus says. “I do _not_ want to know what your kinks are, Shepard.”

He hears her snickering over the comm, as well as Kaidan’s put-upon sigh.

“Anyway, I’m almost to the skycar lot,” Kaidan says. “See you in a bit, Shepard.”

“Sure thing, babe,” Shepard says, to which Garrus answers with a groan of mock-disgust.

“Okay, I’m _done,”_ he says. “This is Garrus, signing out. Enjoy your weird, kinky firefights, you two.”

He watches as Shepard takes down the last merc before heading towards Cision Motor’s entrance.

“We’ll meet you back at Tiberius Towers,” she says. “And Garrus? Tali?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

He chuckles as he puts away his stolen rifle, not even upset anymore about his own interrupted date.

“Anytime, Shepard.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, if your friends won't cut their date short to rescue you from a merc ambush, they're not really your friends.


	9. I Will Follow You Into the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from the Death Cab for Cutie song of the same name.
> 
> More shipping, plus more slight non-compliance to canon, at least with regards to the Extended Cut DLC.

Garrus and Shepard stand on a slope, looking down at the battlefield they’re about to run into.

Anderson’s busy organizing the different ground teams, Kaidan’s gone to brief his students one last time, and Tali has gone back to the Normandy with the others. He fingers the purple strip of fabric tied around his wrist as fire rains down over the city.

“Ready?” he asks Shepard as chaos unfurls around them, waiting to swallow them whole.

“I don’t think anyone’s ever ready for something like this,” she says, looking around at the ruins of London. “Is it too late to quit and move to Andromeda?”

He hums. “I think the last shuttle out of hell just left five minutes ago.”

“Damn,” she says. “Barely missed it. Well, no choice then.” She grins. “At least I’ve got you stuck with me.”

He chuckles, bumping her shoulder with his own. “If I did have a choice, I’d still be stuck with you,” he says. “I’m with you, Shepard. To the end of the line.”

She smiles, grateful, and holds out a fist in that strange human custom he’s gotten familiar with. He bumps it with his own just as Kaidan comes back up behind them.

“Here we go,” Kaidan sighs, tucking his hand into Shepard’s. She looks over at him, eyes wide and worried, and squeezes his hand.

“We’ll make it,” she whispers to him fiercely. _“We’ll make it.”_

“Yeah,” Kaidan says. “Definitely.”

And Garrus says, with his hands over his eyes: “Go ahead and kiss. I’m not looking, don’t worry about me.”

He hears Shepard laugh, and when he peeks through his fingers, she’s smiling, feral, gun out and ready.

“Let’s show these Reapers what organics are made of,” she says, and starts running.

And like always, Garrus runs after her, and follows her into hell.

From there it’s all a blur of running and gunning as the fight for the fate of the galaxy begins in earnest. The three of them fight fluidly, a well-oiled machine, even as the screams of the fallen sound up all around them and the burning streaks of ruined starships paint the sky an angry red.

They reach an open downward slope and pause for just a moment to catch their breath. Harbinger looms overhead, menacing and impossibly _huge,_ and his heart sinks.

But from the corner of his eye Garrus can see shadows and silhouettes to either side of them – turians and humans and krogans and quarians, and all the other races Shepard had rallied – and he takes courage at the thought that maybe—maybe victory is possible; this is _Shepard,_ after all.

Shepard runs, and he follows, and then the ground shakes and everything turns a bright, blinding white.

The high-pitched ringing in his ears is giving Garrus flashbacks to the time he got hit with a rocket to the face. He’s disoriented, dizzy – everything is spinning and he can’t quite remember how he got to lying flat on his back, until suddenly he does.

Shepard’s face pops up suddenly above him, haloed in the light of the beam. He waves her away, struggling to sit up against the pain in his left arm and the intensifying headache exacerbated by the Reaper klaxon booming across the field. He tries to move his arm and curses when he feels his bones shifting in a way they’re not supposed to.

 _“—do you copy?”_ he hears Shepard shouting over the din, somewhere a little ways away, and he makes his way to where he thinks she is, still shaky from the blast. “I need an evac right now!”

He collapses next to Kaidan behind the overturned Mako, breathing hard. He’s not nearly as bad as Kaidan is, and he finds himself thankful for small miracles.

Through bursts of static, Cortez’s voice comes through the line: _“—copy that, Commander.”_

“Steve!” Shepard practically screams into the comm. “You’re okay?”

“—got banged up—had to find another shuttle,” he replies. “—my way to your location, Commander.”

It’s a tense few moments as they wait there behind the Mako, the silence broken only by Garrus’ harsh breathing and Kaidan’s shallow, barely-there breaths. He thinks Shepard might not be breathing at all.

He fights to open his eyes and glances over at her to see her clinging to Kaidan’s hand like a lifeline. They lock eyes and Garrus is shocked to see her so blatantly _afraid,_ tears streaming down her face that she hurriedly brushes away, leaving streaks of dirt across her cheeks.

Cortez arrives with the shuttle, leading it into a steady hover just a few feet away. Shepard jumps up, hauling Kaidan up after her and starts dragging him over as Garrus follows. He heaves himself up onto the shuttle and breathes a sigh of relief, turning to help Shepard get Kaidan inside.

“Take him,” she says. “Get back to the Normandy, both of you.”

At first Garrus is too stunned to do anything but try not to drop his sudden armful of bleeding Kaidan. He lowers him gently onto the floor, propping him up against the wall, but when he sees Shepard already backing away from the shuttle, all he thinks is _Wait, what?_

It must be written all over his face because she grits out: “You’ve got to get out of here.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he shouts back. “You think a broken arm is going to stop me?”

 _“Garrus,”_ she warns, eyes flashing.

“You know I’m the better shot,” he says, rising to his full height and looking Shepard full in the face. “Either both of us go or both of us stay, Shepard. That’s how this works.”

“Not this time, buddy,” she says sadly.

“Shepard—”

“Please,” she says. “I need you to get him out of here.”

_“Shepard—”_

_“Please.”_ She surges forward, stopping him from exiting the shuttle with a firm hand on his uninjured arm. “Please. I can’t—I can’t lose him, Garrus. I need to know he’ll get out of this alive. _Please.”_

“No,” Kaidan protests weakly, struggling to sit up. “Not gonna let you—”

“Don’t argue with me, Kaidan,” she says, and Garrus hears the quiver in her voice that means she’s close to breaking.

“Don’t leave me behind,” Kaidan says, voice cracking in a way that means he already has.

Shepard half-clambers onto the shuttle floor, kissing Kaidan full on the mouth, before she pulls away and drops back down to the ground with tears running unashamedly down her cheeks.

“Love you,” she tells him, before turning her gaze to Garrus. _“Both_ of you. Now _go!”_

 _“No—”_ Kaidan tries to move forward, but Garrus is there, holding him back with considerable effort despite Kaidan’s injured state.

He looks toward Shepard, who only smiles sadly.

“Thanks, buddy,” she says. “I knew I could count on you.”

She raises the lower barrier of the shuttle door, locking it in place before banging a fist against it to signal Cortez. Garrus stumbles as the shuttle surges up, bracing himself against the wall. He catches sight of Shepard sprinting down the road towards the beam before the shuttle door fully closes with a clang.

In the sudden quiet of the vehicle, he can hear Cortez speaking somberly into the comm. “Shore party to Normandy, we are incoming and in need of medical assistance . . .”

“Damn it,” Kaidan mutters softly. And then, louder: _“Damn it!”_

Kaidan collapses against the wall of the shuttle, letting the tears fall freely as Garrus turns away, desperately trying not to cry.

Garrus finds Tali waiting for him when the Cortez brings them into the Normandy’s shuttle bay. They watch silently as Doctor Chakwas leads Kaidan away.

“You’re hurt, too,” she murmurs, taking his hand gently in hers to inspect his injured arm. The purple fabric she’d tied around his wrist looks as singed and limp and forlorn as he feels.

“She sent me _away,”_ he hisses, bristling. _“She sent me away—”_

“I’m sorry,” Tali says, “I wish I could’ve gone with Shepard, too. But . . .” She wraps her arms around him, tucking her head into the crook of his neck, as if she’s always belonged there. “I’m glad she sent you back to me.”

A shudder runs through him, before he pulls her close with his good arm and nuzzles his face against her hood, and finally lets himself cry.

 


	10. Peace on Earth, and Goodwill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would say I'm still deviating from canon, except . . . there's not a whole lot of canon to deviate from anymore? Anyway, have some post-game fluff, both the shipping and platonic kind.

The first thing Garrus does when they get back to Earth is hunt down food for himself and Tali.

The dextro rations they had on the Normandy had barely held out just long enough for both of them until now. And Tali had been going with even less than he was, insisting he take the larger portion of their daily ration because he’d been out leading scouting parties and foraging teams while she spent all day running scans in Engineering.

The last few days of their flight back to Earth, she’d been too weak to even leave the cot they’d set up beside his in the battery, so when the Normandy docks, he runs to the nearest turian camp to trade what little supplies he could and brings it back to the ship, mashing half the contents of an MRE packet and feeding it carefully into Tali’s filter tube as she lies weakly on her cot.

“We’re going to be fine,” he says, more to himself than her. “We’ve made it back, Tali; we’re going to be _fine.”_

She places a tender hand on his mandible and whispers a quiet, _“Thank you,”_ before she falls into the most peaceful sleep she’s had in weeks.

The second thing Garrus does is report to Victus, who’s been swamped with making sure there are supplies to repair the turian fleet and rations for the troops, and helping with coordinating search-and-rescue efforts on top of that. Victus looks like he hasn’t slept since they’d last seen each other in London, his plates pale and brittle-looking and his subharmonics practically grating with exhaustion.

Garrus doesn’t envy him the past few weeks. He tells him as much.

Victus barks a laugh. “I know. Do you have any idea how hard it is to stop hungry soldiers from causing another diplomatic incident with the krogan?” But then he hums, the ghost of a genuine turian smile flicking his mandibles briefly. “But these are problems I could get used to having, I think. To be honest, I’d rather babysit the entire turian fleet than order them to throw themselves against another Reaper.”

“I’d drink to that,” Garrus says, “except we haven’t got anything to drink besides water and our own piss.”

That startles a laugh out of the exhausted Primarch. “It’s good to have you back with us, Little Vakarian.” And Garrus decides to let that slide, just this once. “Remind me to buy you a drink when we finally get the time for it again. Now go on, I’m sure you’ve got other things to take care of.”

Garrus snaps a salute, before he sprints off, heart racing.

The third thing Garrus does is to go find Shepard.

He’s not sure what to feel when he sees her on the hospital bed, looking too pale and small under the white sheets. He’d _known_ that she hadn’t woken yet, but somewhere deep down he’d hoped that she’d be sitting up as he stormed through the door, grinning in that familiar cheeky way she has and saying, _“Wondered when you’d show up.”_

Kaidan’s already there, already parked himself stubbornly at her bedside in an uncomfortable-looking stool, holding her hand gently in both of his. With the shadows under his eyes and the hollowness of his cheeks after weeks and weeks of half-rations, not to mention the untended scruff and the beginnings of gray along his temples, he looks more like a corpse than Shepard does.

Garrus places a tentative talon on his shoulder, gripping tighter when Kaidan doesn’t even seem to notice.

“Two months,” Kaidan croaks out, voice scratchy from sitting here silent for all the hours since they docked. “We’ve been gone _two whole months_ and she hasn’t even shown _signs_ of waking up.”

And if Garrus is being honest with himself – which he almost never is – he’ll admit that this frightens him. They’ve all lost so much to this war. In the months they’d struggled to repair the Normandy on Eden Prime, bits of news had come to them – the victory over the Reapers, of course, but also the death toll, the disabled AIs and VIs, and the destruction of pretty much every single Mass Relay in the galaxy.

He thought the price of victory was steep enough as he watched Joker’s face darken when Kaidan took EDI’s limp body from the bridge down to the silent AI core. Could he still accept that price if it included Shepard?

“Well,” Garrus says dodging away from that line of thought as if it were a bullet in a firefight, “I think if there’s anyone in the galaxy who deserves to sleep in, it’s her, don’t you?”

Kaidan doesn’t say anything, but Garrus still feels the waves of worry rolling off him, still recognizes the stress from being thrust into command of the Normandy – the ship that was always and ever _Shepard’s_ ship – and he sees, too, how all those sleepless nights spent wondering and fearful in a half-empty bed still weigh heavy on his shoulders.

“I guess you could use a break, too,” Garrus says sympathetically, “but just because she saved the galaxy doesn’t mean the work’s done. When you feel up to it, I hear the relief ops could use the help. Be nice for her to wake up to a galaxy that doesn’t look like shit, don’t you think?”

He turns to go without waiting for a reply. Garrus reports back to Victus and throws himself back into the fray, only this time instead of running and gunning on the front lines he’s running messages for the Primarch, coordinating the search-and-rescue ops, and making sure the unrulier turians don’t start another damn war, with only just enough time in between to head back to the Normandy and make sure Tali’s eating well.

After three days of this, he just happens to run by Kaidan, doing pretty much the exact same thing for the humans. He still looks half-dead, but he’s shaved, at least, and gotten a cleaner uniform. Garrus nods as he hands off the requisition forms for trading supplies, and he nods back; Garrus thinks Shepard owes him for this, but he’ll be gracious and consider it a favor, gratis.

After another two months, most of the turian fleet is ready to make the FTL trip back to the Apien Crest, and not a moment too soon. There’s only enough dextro rations to go around, even with the help they get from what little the quarian liveships can spare. He sees them off, bidding goodbye to Victus and sending his regards to his father and sister.

“It’ll be harder to catch a ship back if you don’t come now,” Victus warns.

Garrus just shrugs easily. “To be honest I’m just planning on using up all those vacation days I’m owed.” He grins. “In any case, I don’t think you’ll be needing your expert adviser on the Reapers anytime soon.”

“Thank the spirits for that,” Victus says quietly. “Good luck, Little Vakarian. Give my regards to Shepard when she wakes up.”

“Yeah,” Garrus says, ridiculously hopeful in the face of everything. “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

Victus salutes, and Garrus returns it one last time before the Primarch turns to board his ship.

“And Sir?” Garrus calls out just as Victus reaches the airlock. He turns, curious. “Stop calling me Little Vakarian!”

Victus’ ringing laughter floats over to him as the airlock door closes, and Garrus takes his little victories where he can.

But two _more_ months after that, Shepard _still_ hasn’t woken up, and Garrus is getting well and truly _scared._

All but a few incredibly-damaged turian ships are leaving in a few days, with several of their carriers full of krogans, meant to drop them off on Tuchanka before swinging back around to Palaven. With his daily schedule rapidly clearing up, Garrus finds himself more and more in Shepard’s room, keeping her company while Kaidan works himself ragged trying to hold the Alliance – and, by extension, humanity – together.

Often, Tali is there, too, sitting quietly beside him and occasionally holding his hand, worrying.

“The quarians are thinking of heading back to Rannoch soon,” she tells him quietly one day.

Garrus doesn’t hear anything for a moment, and then he panics and turns to check if Shepard’s heart had stopped beating, belatedly realizing that the one to skip a beat had been his own.

“Already?” he murmurs, squeezing Tali’s hand.

“They’ve gotten enough supplies to keep the Fleet self-sufficient for the entire journey,” she says. “I think they’re planning on leaving in a month.”

“Oh,” Garrus says. And then he realizes: _oh._ “They?”

She pauses, and for a moment there’s no other sound except for Shepard’s quiet breathing and the beeping of the monitor, before Tali just shrugs and almost – _almost_ – manages to be nonchalant.

But Garrus has never been particularly optimistic, and he still feels anxiety coiling in his belly for this one thing he’s still reluctant to let himself hope for.

“It’s a long trip to make on your own,” he warns her.

“We’ll build that bridge when we get there,” she says.

And he says: “I think you meant—”

“Not. The point. Garrus,” she snaps, before sighing. “There’s still too many important things here,” she says quietly.

And Garrus chokes up a little bit, his heart in his throat. “Thank you,” he says, and he really, really means it.

Tali laughs and swats at him playfully, before she says: “I meant _Shepard,_ you arrogant _bosh’tet.”_

“Right,” he says, laughing. “Right, of course. My bad.”

But when he pulls her in for a hug, she goes willingly, and when Garrus glances over at the bed he thinks for a moment that Shepard had been smiling a little in her sleep.

After that, things start to look up. Two days later Miranda reports a positive change in Shepard’s brainwaves, and two days after that he watches Kaidan hold Shepard’s hand as Miranda’s team of doctors start to lower the anesthetic dosage bit by bit.

They sit on opposite sides of her bed after, just listening to her deep, even breathing.

“I think her eyelids just moved,” Garrus says into the silence, twilight shadows creeping into the hospital room as the sun sets over London.

Kaidan chuckles, still too exhausted to be particularly hopeful, but his voice is lined with the tiniest bit of amusement when he answers: “Miranda said it’ll be a day or so before she’s off the sedatives. And then not even completely; they’re keeping some localized anesthesia for her arm, her leg—”

“You’re such a _downer,”_ Garrus complains.

Kaidan smiles tiredly. “I just think it’s better to be cautious, that’s all,” he says. “The universe isn’t always kind to soldiers like us.”

He recognizes the echoes of Alchera in that statement, the knee-jerk defense mechanism against the possibility of repeating the two most miserable years in both their lives. But lately the universe has been kinder than he’s ever seen it, and Garrus—Garrus thinks anything can happen.

He’s right.

Six months, one week, and five days after he left her on Earth, Shepard wakes up.

It’s early afternoon, and Kaidan is still out; they’d been taking shifts staying with her the last few days, making sure a friendly face was always available for her to wake up to. Sometimes Tali is with him, or Liara or James would watch over her if neither he nor Kaidan could be there, but as it happens it’s just Garrus there the first time Shepard opens her eyes.

Garrus holds very, very still when her eyelids flicker open, unable to believe it at first. He watches, holding his breath, as her eyes scan the room slowly before settling on him.

They stare at each other for a moment, before Garrus says: “Took you long enough, Shepard.”

And then slowly – so slowly he can barely tell it’s happening – one corner of her mouth tilts up in a tiny, brief, _wonderful_ smile.

He flicks his mandibles wide in an unabashed turian grin, but at the same time he feels how much effort it took for her to make that smallest of gestures, so he says: “Don’t worry about taking it easy for now, Shepard. I’ll be right here. Whenever you need me.”

Her breathing quickens, before she opens her mouth and whispers, with what he can tell is a great deal of effort: _“Just . . . like . . . old times . . .?”_

He grins wider, so very ridiculously _happy._ “Exactly.”

And then she smiles that barely-there smile again, before she slips back into a peaceful, easy sleep. Garrus sits there, basking in the warm rush of happiness, and it’s then that he finally _knows,_ deep in his bones, without a single shred of doubt.

They’ve _won._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S DONE, THANK GOD.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who stuck with this to the end! I hope you guys liked my take on one of the sweetest friendships in-game, and I also hope this helps everyone appreciate more platonic fluff??? Squad friendships give me life, honestly. 
> 
> Anyway, thank you again for reading my silly little fic, and I hope you enjoyed the ride! :)


End file.
